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Rock Paper Sectoid: RPS vs. The Alien Menace

This'll be my first game, and I'll be playing on Classic Ironman, because Jake Solomon told me I shouldn't, and he's not the boss of me. Rookies will be left with their default names until they graduate to Squaddie and are assigned a class. Then I shall rename them with a suitable name from the list, alternating between RPS writers and forum members. I shall do my best to keep track of how everyone dies, and post something here in memoriam. Screenshots will be taken of anyone getting over the rank of Sergeant. Hopefully I'll get some nice bonus screenies of you all being badass.

And here's the list, stretching to from the door of the recruiting office round the hill and past the graveyard, Cannon Fodder style:

Alec Meer, reprising his role as the Heavy
Jim Rossignol goes for vantage to appreciate the terrain- may as well bring a rifle. Sniper.John Walker; let's find out how well he really heals, in Support.Adam Smith, Supporting those obscure indie soldiers.Nathan Grayson, from the Colonies, arriving to the battle late, just in time to finish off the aliens and claim he won the whole thing. Assault.Quinns, bringing that rapid fire word Assault.Rob Florence, flings dice like bullets. Let's see if he can fling bullets like dice. Heavy.Tim Stone will have the armour penetration all calculated out in a nice stat table for that one perfect Snipe.Lewie Proctor leads regular Assaults on my wallet. Let's see how he does here.Edit: almost forgot Richard Cobbett. He can be a Heavy, laying down suppression and deadly puns with equal ease.And, of course, Keiron Gillen as a Psychic, for being mental.
Edit- the Editing: Brendan, Supporting the squad with clever words.

Gorzan as a Sniper.Drake Sigar as a Sniper.lasikbear as Support.Splynter as Support, but only if I can find a Canadian Support soldier (can one change nationality?)Makariel in Assault.AlexClockwork in Assault.
Tikey as a Heavy.Sparkasaurusmex in Assault.Patrick Swayze in Assault.
Edit: Sunjumper as a Heavy.
Jockie as whatever I need to fill in a gap.
hellraiserzlo joins the spooky Psychic corp.
Oshada in Assault
DWZippy as yet another Assault. I expect to go through a fair number of these, so it's nice to have plenty of names.
Drayk as a Sniper.
Lacessit as a Sniper.
Hypernetic as something that isn't Support- whichever class I determine to be the most asshole-ish.
DarkFenix grabs the big guns.
MadJax as an Assault.
Dr. Honeyslut in Support. Trust him/her, he/she is a Dr. Even if he/she's looking at you funny.
siegarettes makes me think of smoke, so smoke grenades, so we're going Support.
soldant signs up to our Support brigade.
Tailswallower makes sure we have plenty of bandages on the battlefield.
SanguineAngel signs up for Support.
Woundedbum is there where the need is.
So's Flint.

If anyone cares to assign me to their time I'd love to be a Heavy, or a Support if you'd prefer.

Come back safely and covered in green blood, soldiers.

Last edited by arathain; 10-10-2012 at 05:40 PM.
Reason: I forgot Brendan. How did I forget Brendan?

Played 4 hours of Classic Ironman this morning and it's truly heartbreaking. I made it to May before I was Indepence Day'd off the planet. Tough, brutal, and heartbreaking, this is the Xcom way and I love it! Have started a Normal playthrough now, but looking forward to this thread :-D (Woot Im already on the list as an assault :-D)

Yes, I update the below link frequently on a whisky fuelled rampage. I regret nothing.

The cat got me up a little early, so I was able to get the opening mission done. Lovely little engagement with a handful of Sectoids entrenched on a bridge being annoyingly difficult to flank. They had a flanking reinforcement of their own that I was fortunately prepared for; reaction fire took down one, a counter-flank another and a grenade a third. The creeps on the bridge didn't go down without a fight, and three soldiers took fire and are resting in the med bay for a couple of weeks. Still, three Rookies took off their disguises to reveal themselves as Alec, John and Nathan. Alec will have to take the lead on his own in the next mission while the other two heal up.

Wow, Alec Meer must really have it in for poor John Walker. On my second mission, instead of blowing up the two aliens as ordered, Alec took the opportunity to blow up one alien and mutilate John sufficiently to put him out of commission for 13 days. Poor John, don't worry, legs grow back.

Edit: However, after mission 3 when Alec was very nearly eviscerated by alien fire, I'm quite certain John was looking rather smug as Alec joined him in the infirmary. "If only someone was there to patch you up, eh?"

Jim Rossignol is proving quite the sneaky murderous little dirtbag, racking up a fair kill count already, all of which while being nowhere near the front lines.

Edit 2: Nooooooo, John Walker, you shall be missed (not by Alec though, ZING!). Poor guy, he was the team's only medic on what should have been an easy xp run for some rookies. After being ambushed by a pair of floaters he couldn't be helped as he bled out on the floor.

Edit 3: Sorry Squaddie Splynter, you are down and out. Crouched behind a large car in a London car park, an enemy floater took you out in one lucky shot. In happer news, mister Rossignol just made Captain, and you lasikbear are now a Corporal.

Edit 4: Disastrous mission. Quinns is dead, so's Alec, along with a random recruit. Two of the survivors are out for 14 and 15 days respectively, the last member is out for 5. Quinns got really unlucky, a critical hit from a fairly ordinary enemy struck him for 10 damage, Alec was mobbed and very nearly survived. An enemy got into melee and reduced him to 1hp, but the zombie I hadn't seen then came round the corner and finished him off. I'd have protected him, but I was being attacked from two sides and had to choose to save one or the other. I may well restart tomorrow, I've made some pretty bad screw ups (like spending lots and lots of money under the assumption things like medkits were consumable, doh!) and am also thinking the 30% cash bonus from the African base would be very nice.

Edit 9000: Yup, started again. Holy cow it's so much easier now that I didn't blow all my damn money on useless crap. A few missions in, much better idea of what I'm doing in those too, only one significant casualty so far; Lieutenant Tikey, at the time my highest ranking soldier, had a terrifically unlucky run, caught by three enemies in half-cover on a mission the day before I finished researching carapace armour. Poor Tikey, I'd grown quite attached to him after his amazing shot in the previous mission got a treble kill (killed two aliens, one of which killed a third via mind-link). Still, I now have Lieutenants Makariel, AlexClockwork and Gorzan. Sergeant "Lucky Bastard" Lasikbear (congrats, first one of my soldiers to earn a nickname from me!) is once again in support, swiftly becoming a reliable staple of both my campaigns, seemingly charmed never to be on the receiving end of anything too lethal.

We were assaulting out first UFO. The approach went fine. Jim took a hit from a plasma pistol, but Tikey patched him up like new. The craft contained a single Outsider. The Rookie shot at it. Alec and Tikey sprayed bullets at it. Jim fired a headshot and a reaction shot. Nothing hit. It never missed. It always killed. Alec was first. The Rookie went down soon after. It came after Jim. Tikey was a hero, who ran to the hull of the UFO hoping to ambush it as it came out. He got off a point blank, deliberate shot. 52% chance to hit, after a string of 45s from everyone else. Miss. Dead.

I feel like the RNG screwed me a bit for this one. Looking forward to the mission where it evens out.

Sounds like things are going to get sticky! Loving it so far and can't wait till friday! I expect Heavy arathain to make an appearance in my game ;) Also, if you find any more assault slots opening up, feel free to stick me in there

Good, more meat for the grinder! Most of the filler folk will probably end up being support in my game, I do seem to go through a fair few of those ("Lucky Bastard" Lasikbear's partners/temp replacements in support never seems to come out of gunfights looking very healthy). Heavies don't seem to pop up much in the roster and snipers just don't die, of the support and assault, assault has some fairly impressive resilience and a tendency to nail anything getting particularly near them (oh how I love the double shot ability, the premier "You. Die. Now." move), support on the other hand, they're on the front lines, they have no special armament and nothing special keeping them particularly alive (if they survive the turn of course, they can medkit up, but that's a big if).

Don't worry though guys, I've actually researched armour thicker than cardboard for you all this time! I'm sure I'll eventually have enough materials to equip more than one man with it.

You are not very good at this commanding thing, are you? ;) What would make reading this even more entertaining would be a screenshot or two every now and then. That would allow us readers to get a better idea of the situations that turn the RPS crew into heroes and / or heaps of steaming flesh.

Keep it up, I might even ask to become a part of the squad if the survival rate increases.

You are not very good at this commanding thing, are you? ;) What would make reading this even more entertaining would be a screenshot or two every now and then. That would allow us readers to get a better idea of the situations that turn the RPS crew into heroes and / or heaps of steaming flesh.

Keep it up, I might even ask to become a part of the squad if the survival rate increases.

Not very good at commanding? I don't think my good friend General Melchett would agree with that. The enemy is on one side, my boys on the other, it makes perfect sense to stroll over and give them what for!

I'll try and remember to take a screenie or two, though most of the time I don't see the death coming. I'll have to get quicker on my screenshot key ;)

And my squad's survival rate has gone up dramatically in my newly restarted campaign. About 5 missions in with 1 casualty.